adventure reno

Back on the Wagon

2008-01-17T23:07:00.000-05:00

So it's only been about three months- actually it's been almost exactly three months. (Easy to measure the time with this.) But I'm finally getting back on the renovation wagon. We actually don't have much of a choice considering the clock is ticking for when our little one will become mobile and we need to cover all the exposed plaster with the baseboards.

So when Wyatt will allow, I've snuck out to the garage and have resumed chipping off the remaining paint from the baseboards which were dipstripped. This process consists of taking a flathead screwdriver and a hammer and slowly chipping away those stubborn pieces that are ubiquitous in the curves and ridges of our trim. I can get about a foot and a half done in a two hour span so it is slow going, but it's going. I have one piece stained and leaning against the dining room wall for inspiration and it's working. My post baby nesting is taking off with a vengeance and I am more inspired than ever before to get this house looking amazing. Unfortunately I'm also more pressed for time than ever before, but I've never let a little thing like that stop me.

Cradle Refinishing

2007-10-15T15:30:00.001-04:00

Since we've been given a few extra days of nesting, we've started in on refinishing the family cradle. I'll admit, I wasn't overly excited to start it, largely because I have such a love/hate relationship with staining. On one hand by the time it's finished 99% of the time I'm happy with it, it's just the process that gets me every time.

A little bit of history on the piece... I don't know to what degree, but my great grandpa on my dad's side was a woodworker. This particular piece has been passed down but not refinished, so I figured between all the woodworking experience I've got in over the past year and the copious amounts of stain in the garage, I was up for the task. It came to me with the previous finish sanded off which I was grateful for, however it revealed that the cradle was seemingly constructed of multiple types of wood, which made me nervous because a dark stain could absorb very differently. I finally set out yesterday morning thinking I could give it a couple of final coats of sanding to get it smooth, then precondition if necessary. I did all of the above in a matter of only an hour or so, leaving me with dreamy notions that I would have the whole thing finished by sundown. Then the stain went on. Granted my fears of blotchiness were not realized which i was grateful for, but as soon as the walnut stain was wiped off, it revealed the entire piece covered in one of the banes of my existence- tiny spirals left from a power sander. Naturally they couldn't be seen until the stain soaked into them- but they were everywhere. I weighed my options and after giving in to the fact that there was no way I was going to paint it, I realized I had one choice left- to hand sand all of the spirals out as best I could, not only starting from scratch but starting about three steps back.

I set out putting my weight behind by 50 grit sandpaper and gummed up one piece after another with the tacky stain until all eight sides were once again sanded down (all in all about six more hours of work). I've since reapplied the stain and it looks much better, although of course, I can pick out all the areas where it didn't go on as evenly as I would like. I'm now waiting on the stain to dry, and for Clint, with his own issues of perfection to countersink the exposed screws and add a wood plug to cover them. Then shellac (our finishing agent of choice, also conveniently baby safe) and depending on timing, an element or two Clint is in charge of to make it our own.

Of course all of this could be interrupted by a baby that is due- well today, but knowing us I'll have Clint putting on the finishing touches while I'm in labor (which is hopefully sooner rather than later).

Looking towards winter on an 80 degree day

2007-10-04T08:46:00.000-04:00

This morning I am waiting patiently for... our furnace people! That's right, hopefully this time tomorrow we will have working heat. Not that (as Clint pointed out) I will allow him to turn it on until we can see our breaths in the house, but it'll make these chilly mornings a little more bearable knowing they're optional. I'm imagining some grumbling under their breaths as they realize they have to carry it down the trap door in our floor, or a few choice words when they have to shimmy on their bellies to vent it out behind, saving the wall for the tankless water heater that will someday go there- but it's a small price to pay (well, maybe not literally) to get some 93% efficiency, built in humidifier heat in this house for our impending hibernation with baby.

On how I almost sent my baby’s daddy to jail

2007-10-02T13:41:00.000-04:00

So this isn’t really an entry on the house, unless you consider the perpetual state of disarray we are living in due to home renovations. But it is an amusing enough anecdote (now) that I thought I would share it.

About a month ago, Clint got a jury summons in the mail. I (naturally ignoring the federal prohibition on opening other people’s mail) promptly tore it open and proceeded to text him that he was in fact due for jury duty in about a month. I searched the form for a place to enter in my impending due date certain it would excuse him from his civic duty. From there it is anyone’s guess as to where it went. I think that was right around the time we began living on one floor in preparation for the floor refinishing, and things got shuffled around. Nevertheless neither I nor him (considering he had never laid eyes on it) gave it another thought.

Cut forward to this past Friday, when who knows what jarred my memory and I all the sudden realized that a. he was summonsed and b. I haven’t seen that piece of paper since it was opened. I wasn’t too concerned until I searched the fridge (where almost all important documents go) and the copious stacks of paper we tend to accumulate full of random things that need addressing or filing at one point or another. Alas, I came up with nothing. As it was Saturday afternoon at this point the best we could do was email the court asking him for the date and time he was due to report. I kept insisting that although it was early October, I was sure it wasn’t the first so I wasn’t too concerned (or I was acting not too concerned largely to keep Clint from going into a panic). At this point we were literally scrubbing the house top to bottom to rid it of any noxious dust so that we could move back in and while I was doing my 30th load of laundry I thought to check on those shelves.

Lo and behold, there it is. As I started to do my “I told you it would work out ok” dance I happened to look at the date- October 1st, 8am. In other words, first thing on Monday. Had we not found that, he would have likely had a warrant issued with consequences including 3 days of jail and/or a rather hefty fine. So not only was the date impending allowing him no time for freelance or to even give his workplace adequate notice, but any excuses for absence must have been submitted one week prior. Naturally I tucked my tail between my legs and admitted full fault. During what was already shaping up to be one of his busiest weeks (of course just 2 weeks before my due date-classic Reno (this includes both of us)) was now filled with two weeks of mandatory, inexcusable jury duty. After offering copious apologies, I reassured him that of course they would let him out when he arrived- just tell them his wife is due any minute.

Well that might be what you’d think, but again-wrong. So as we speak Clint is fulfilling his civic duty for the next two weeks, and I have a post it note in my wallet with a number to call in case I go into labor- to ask that juror #300609 be excused. Clint has luckily forgiven me and on the upside, we’ve got one great story to start out with in the baby book- how papa almost went to jail.

Brief Tuesday Morning Update

2007-09-25T12:30:00.000-04:00

Of course we are way behind on all that has been going on- so much so in fact that it has left us no time to post.

The short version is the floor people arrived today and are starting in on our wood floors upstairs. I can’t imagine we’re their favorite customers because our floors are in pretty rough shape between the thick coats of paint and metal plates scattered across-but really it’s their own fault for transforming the ones downstairs so beautifully . Now that we know what they are capable of, of course we’re going to ask that of them again. We’re estimating that it will be at least a week until we can move back upstairs. Somehow we got lucky and even though it hasn’t rained in weeks, the few days they need the windows open to dry the floors the forcast is calling for- you guessed it- rain.

The long version of how we got here involves a lot of hard work and sweat this weekend by Dad and Kathy who were generous enough to volunteer their services (pictures and details to come as soon as we can once again access our computer). It’s all none too soon either- as of today we’re only 20 days out from our due date, and as of yesterday I am considered full term. Clint routinely speaks to the baby, asking him/her to stay in just a little longer so hopefully that’ll buy us some time.

Latest purchase

2007-09-12T14:40:00.001-04:00

Our latest purchase in home renovation is the ceiling fan that will go in the nursery/office. We were pretty happy to have found something modern to suit our tastes, but with enough whimsy that it wouldn't look out of place in a child's room. We're cutting it close with the height clearance (you're supposed to have 7'), but we measured what's in our bedroom and it doesn't meet this standard either and it doesn't look too low. Not to mention we're not tall people, so if we happen to have incredibly tall visitors that are for some reason in our baby's room they will just have to duck.

Behold:

Trim update

2007-09-12T10:22:00.001-04:00

Yea! Trim is dip stripped and ready to bring home. Of course last night we discovered a stash of trim we forgot to include in the first trip, but this will give me a good start at least. Now I just have to fight off the urge to work on my (our) birthday(s).

Baby steps

2007-09-11T14:59:00.001-04:00

We are slowly but surely making progress upstairs. We now have all the door frames and window sill heat gunned, and the door frames about half completed in the chemical stripping process. So far I’ve slathered two buckets of plaster into the closet where we removed the rod and surrounding wood. We have our third bucket so I’ll work on completing that tonight.

The salvageable trim has been removed (for some reason much of the upstairs trim is mismatched) and as of yesterday is being dip-stripped. We’ll get that back in a couple of days and I’ll proceed with my hammer and screwdriver technique of removing all of the stubborn paint chips that remain, sanding it down, cleaning it with denatured alcohol, staining and shellacing. Then we’ll reinstall, after having given the rooms a fresh coat of paint. (Do you like how I sum all this up neatly like we’ll just knock this all out one afternoon and cheerio, we’re done).

In my optimistic world this is all done in the next two weeks by the time they arrive to refinish the floors. In reality I’m thinking that moving back upstairs is going to be a wonderful Christmas present.

Movin' on down

2007-09-05T11:34:00.000-04:00

Labor day weekend was a productive one for us, and while my initial instinct was to try to figure out how we could pull off a tropical vacation somewhere, the reality of our renovation workload won out and instead we set out to see how much we could get done upstairs. Let me first state how much this was largely possible thanks to the heat gunning expertise of a one Mary Martineau, who devoted a rather warm evening to stripping our upstairs doorframes. (We still owe you dinner for that!) With this jump start we got just enough motivation to really do some damage. We began by moving nearly everything downstairs. As you can imagine, this has created quite a sight. We have our mattress in the living room floor, our dressers around the perimeter of the room, and our office equipment neatly set up in the dining room. We have in essence gone from living in a two bedroom house to a studio apartment. But at the same time, I will say it’s quite cozy. With the increasing middle of the night trips to the bathroom I can appreciate not having to navigate the stairs, and with the pillows added to the bed to accommodate the ever-growing belly I no longer have to worry about either myself or Clint rolling off the bed and falling the great distance to the ground (our bed was ridiculously high). AND as an added bonus those middle of the night trips to eat a bowl of cereal so that I can sleep in (otherwise the hunger prevents it)- are much easier with the kitchen only a few steps away.

Once everything was out we sealed off the area with two tarps and in essence made it a quarantined area, and Clint went to town on heat gunning the door frames. All of these precautions are being done in the likelihood given the age of the house that the paint being stripped contains lead. As of yesterday I am thrilled to say all four door frames have been heat gunned, most the trim has been removed (for dip stripping), and we are making substantial progress toward getting it all the necessary work completed by the September 25th deadline, when the floor people will arrive to refinish the upstairs floors. We realize this is cutting it ridiculously close but we’re doing it this way for a couple of reasons. First and most important is the health of the baby. While in a perfect world this would all be done before there was a baby, alas there is so we have two options- either do it before the baby is born, or after. After talking to the doctor we found out that while the baby is in utero, for it to be exposed to anything- be it lead or the fumes from polyurethane I would have to be exposed to it in such concentrations that it enters my bloodstream. Given that I stripped all the wood in the living room for about 6 months straight, not always taking perfect precautions and my lead levels tested normal, I feel pretty confident that the baby is safe, especially given the steps we’re taking to ensure it. In contrast, once the baby is here, all it has to do is breathe the air directly. Thus this way, all of the work that even presents a modicum of danger is done and out of the way (forever!) before little Reno arrives. Worst case scenario this means we’ll still be living downstairs whenever he/she decides to arrive, but again- it may just make it easier being in a smaller space for a bit where everything is almost literally at arms reach. Not to mention this embodies the fly by the seat of our pants lifestyle we are much more accustomed to living- I can’t even imagine how boring life would be if we had the nursery complete now, like most normal people do. I suppose this is as appropriate a lifestyle for the baby to enter into as we could imagine, we’re at least setting it up with realistic expectations of life with Clint and I as parents.

Nursery/Office Renovation Step 1

2007-08-27T15:54:00.000-04:00

I’ve finally got off of the lazy train and managed to get some work done around the nursery yesterday.

I started by pulling off the baseboards that need stripped, revealing 100 years worth of dirt and dust and one 1956 baseball card from the Washington Senators worth approximately $.99 on ebay. I moved several books, files, papers, etc. down to the dining room and with the fortuitous timing of a Billy and Michele drop-by we got the bookshelf and filing cabinet down as well. Then I tore out the bar and filthy shelves in the closet. Turns out much of the wood was walled in so its removal exposed missing lathe and resulted in about a three inch wide and half inch deep gap in the plaster running the perimeter of the closet. Not to be deterred I proceeded to nail in a few scraps of wood we had (including a yard stick much to Clint’s chagrin) and slapped almost an entire bucket of plaster in there. Once that dries (say around 2010) I’ll put a few more coats of plaster, wet sand and paint. Tonight I’m headed to the container store where they’re having one of two annual elfa sales to design our daughter or son’s future closet. Organization here is going to be key because the toy storage available in our house is frighteningly minimal. We’re thinking that surely children’s clothes cannot take up THAT much room, so if we can pull off a few drawers in the closet for toy storage we’ll be set.
So once again we’re on track to have an awesome closet, and a room that’s an eternal work in progress. I think we gravitate to the small areas because we can’t resist that instant gratification that comes so seldom in renovation work.

Long list of next steps

2007-08-24T13:43:00.000-04:00

As promised, here are our tentative nursery/office plans:

-remove doors strategically to keep Chloe out of areas and keep it dark/quiet when Clint is up working late

-heat gun & strip door frames & window sill

-heat gun & strip the sides of the stairs (Clint is keen on this)

-gut the nursery closet in preparation for system similar to that which is in our coat closet

-pull off all baseboards and trim that we’ll salvage (half of it in the nursery doesn’t match). Take to get dip stripped.

-do all finishing work on dip stripped trim (involves a screwdriver and a hammer to knock off the pieces that didn’t come off in the process then sanding, and finally cleaning with denatured alcohol & steel wool).

-heat gun and strip all doors-5 in total (still need to do the one downstairs also)

-stain and shellac trim

-paint nursery

-new light fixture/fan (not that our 2 bare bulbs in the ceiling aren't beautiful)

-completely move out of the upstairs so floors can be refinished

-get floors refinished, move back in (this is looking like it's going to be end of September- cutting it close)

-*maybe* install a whole house fan. Clint is worried about fumes from the floor refinishing and would feel better with this sucking the air out

-build pieces necessary for the office to effectively function as both an office and a nursery

-assemble/hang nursery furniture

-put closet organizer in our bedroom closet that has been in our garage since December (we're nothing if not optimistic)

-buy ikea wardrobe to make up for lost closet in nursery

-possibly get Flor tiles and install them in closet floor- this may be necessary because another of the great mysteries of an old house- it looks like part of the closet floor at one point in time caught fire.

-get remaining missing trim milled

-one day, get new windows

And poof! We’re done! Just like that! Except I’d imagine for all this to occur start to finish we’re looking at a similar timeframe to the work we did downstairs which only took- oh- about a year. WITHOUT a baby. Occasionally I think that we should wait to do any of it until after the baby is here, but then I realize that if it’s disruptive to be moving out of the upstairs and staying away from the house now, it’ll probably be tenfold with an infant. Not to mention the added worry of a tiny one learning to crawl who undoubtedly will like to eat things off the floor- like paint chips. Thus we are charging ahead. I keep reminding myself that we often survive, and even thrive on chaos, by often repeating to ourselves what has quickly become our motto- “it’s an adventure!”

Heading back into the storm

2007-08-20T16:39:00.001-04:00

I’m sure by now you’ve realized our contributions to this blog seem to run in fits and starts- really it is an accurate tracking of how our work on the house tends to go. I’m amazed when I think back to the phenomenal productivity I was able to achieve back when I was in grad school and stripping trim literally every night. I’m not sure if it’s the pregnancy or the weather (or the combination of the two) but any of the work I have to do I just can’t seem to get motivated to tackle. Part of that surely rests in my inability to get the things done that are most pressing- such as stripping the door frames upstairs. If I haven’t fully explained how renovations upstairs need to go- here’s the abbreviated version.

One of the more critical aspects to the entire upstairs renovation is getting the floors refinished. Naturally anything that could potentially ruin newly finished floors, such as stripping wood, must be completed first. Since we realized that we can pay someone to do about 75% of the work stripping the trim and because that work is off limits to me until the baby is eating solid foods (due to the possibility the paint could be lead-based) our new approach has been to pull it off what we can and take it to New Albany where they “dip strip” it. This leaves us with only door jambs and window sills that must be stripped in place, which leaves us with only Clint and a heat gun to get this done. There are two challenges inherent with this- one is that unlike me, heat gunning is not Clint’s favorite type of renovation work. Second, those of you who know Clint are aware that he likes to keep his schedule at about 110%. Nevertheless we managed to get around to starting this process under threat of the floors possibly being redone in two weeks. What we hadn’t anticipated is how disruptive this will all be. We started in the office/nursery with the closet, which meant removing all of Clint’s clothes and my sweaters. Currently they are parked in our bedroom on a garment rack and sweaters are stacked in the corner on our shoe rack. Now we have to decide just how much we’re going to tear apart the office/nursery (and in the process our bedroom) to be able to work on it to get it to the place we ultimately want it to be. Do we do a little bit at a time making about 4 times the work over the long haul, or do we just go forth and go crazy, making our lives chaotic for the time being, but in the long run much more manageable? Normal people might choose the former option with a baby on the way in only 8 short weeks- but order and logic really never have been our strong suits. I’m still not sure how it will all go, or just how much we can get done before baby Reno arrives but I’ll post our tentative plans tomorrow so everyone can see just what we’re up against.

Pseudo bathroom makeover

2007-07-23T11:20:00.001-04:00

With Clint being ridiculously busy in preparation for his show, I realized this weekend I either drown Clint in a cacophony of “I’m bored”, or I could figure out a way to keep myself busy. With less than three months away from the big due date you may be asking “Is she finally getting around to the nursery?” In short, the answer to that is no, for a variety of reasons. As much as I want to get it done, it is by far the most complicated room with needs ranging from electrical to wood stripping, all of which lie outside my area of expertise or outside the range of safety for me to take part in while pregnant. Much of that will wait until after Clint’s big show, which is now only a little more than a week away.

Instead I turned my sights to the crowning jewel of hideousness in our house- the bathroom. We have long been holding out on doing anything to this area for several reasons, the most critical being that we loathe doing anything (and spending the money on something) twice. As many of you know, in the bathroom lies the water heater- walled in like the ancient artifact it is. It’s long past it’s prime so we’ve literally been waiting for the whole thing to go. At that point we’re planning on putting a tankless heater in the crawlspace, and rearranging to the floorplan in a much more usable manner. We’ll also address issues like the lack of a ventilation fan for the humidity, the area where floor slopes towards the water heater because of it’s weight, and the subfloor where the toilet has sunken into it. As you can see this is not a small job.

When we moved into the house almost a year ago I was planning on doing a quick and dirty makeover. Pull down the wallpaper which was literally held up by thumbtacks, paint the walls white, and live with it until the water heater necessitated otherwise. Like many projects with the house, I had no idea what we were getting ourselves into until the paper came down. It took with it layers of paint in some areas, the drywall paper in others, and it left behind its backing in bits and pieces. Any attempts to remedy this resulted in losing more drywall paper, which ultimately has to be mudded over before painting. Not wanting to put the effort into something we know we’re going to gut, we left it and have been living with it for a year, affectionately referring to it as our “meth lab”.

Flash forward to this weekend where I was a. threatened with boredom, and b. probably going through some early nesting. In short I decided to take on what we’re calling our “ghetto makeover”. I’ll wait for details until I can post pictures and I get the last few pieces wrapped up, but all in all I will say, it looks much better, although to be fair, there’s almost nothing I could have done to make it look worse.

Operation "Vacation": Day 6 & 8

2007-07-07T14:44:00.000-04:00

It is done. The problem that has been plaguing us since- well since we bought the house is now officially taken care of. I'm referring, of course, to our crumbling chimney, or what once was our chimney anyway. We were to the point where we would cringe every time the wind blow hard enough or a storm came through, expecting to hear the rumblings of bricks showering down from our house onto our neighbor's. We got a few estimates from chimney companies to do the work, and they ranged from a shocking $2,500 to $4,000. We took this conundrum to the all knowing family, who promptly sent a team up to help. We cannot say enough about how grateful we are for their help, or the value of their collective expertise. They even brought their own lunch thanks to Grandma!

Day 1 began by taking care of the active wasp nest (and the wasps themselves) settled just under the peak of the roof.

Then came the demolition. John became quite adept at making sure the debris fell on the correct side of the house, and aiming the bricks as he tossed them down so they landed squarely in our yard.

After he came down he showed us what was left of the mortar, in essence it was the equivalent of taking a handful of crackers and crumbling them in your hand.

Following this the team quickly mobilized to clean up the yard and dispose of the bricks. The chimney was taken below the roofline...

...and the hole was covered enough to keep out rain, which naturally sprang up. Plans were made to return Saturday to finish the job.

In the meantime Clint and I spent much time trying to figure out what to do with the rusted-through exhaust pipe for the furnace. The long and short of it is that we'll more than likely go with a 90% furnace that vents out the side, rather than pay half that cost to get our chimney and exhaust up to code (I suppose that's important with the baby coming and all). We're a bit early on the furnace, it's only 14 years old and expected to last 15-20 but we'd rather spend the money on something we would have to eventually, than throw half of it away in a short-term solution that would only last as long as the existing furnace. So after consultation with the family, it was decided that Saturday's work would consist of closing off the roof.

They all returned in the morning and got straight to work. Unfortunately it was a sweltering 90 degrees, which wasn't much fun for anyone, particularly those seated on the roof.

They wrapped it all up by early afternoon, and as quickly as they came, packed up their tools and were off. There is no way I could put into words what a relief it is to no longer have to worry about that, and especially how wonderful it is to not have to pay thousands of dollars out to have it done. We are incredibly grateful to have so many that not only have the talent, skills, and know-how to do it, but also the generous hearts to come up for two days to help us out. Thank you Grandpa, Bob, John, Andy & Robby.

Operation "Vacation": Day 5 revisited

2007-07-06T01:49:00.000-04:00

We're a day behind in posting so bear with us while we catch up.

Day 5 was the official finishing of the closet. We laughed about how when first considering the project I thought it was a weekend job. Weekend...or a little over two months of weekends. In retrospect we realized how much we were biting off- getting an electrician in to wire through a wall 3/4" thick with lathe and plaster, repairing an almost 2 foot hole in the wall, installing what was in the end a rather complex shelving system, laying flor carpet tiles which had to be individually measured and cut to 1/16th of an inch in order to fit properly, cutting, staining and shellacing trim both around the door and the baseboards, and finally, Clint putting his crowning touches on the furnace pipe. But enough about the work, let's admire the results.

Here's the before of the closet floor:

and the after:

Looking towards the door:

Here's the trim around the door installed (note the nice patching job above):

And finally- Clint's flourishes:

A little bit of background on those... this spring Clint travelled with miranda sound to Dubuque IA where they stayed at the Julien Inn. On their way the bassist, sean, informed the group that it was a hotel once owned by Mr. Al Capone and often used as a hideout when things got "too hot". This pattern appeared on wallpaper in the hotel and Clint was quite taken with it. So here we have it replicated in a painstakingly hand-painted manner. Yes, we fully realize this is a closet, that is a furnace pipe, and it is a lot of work for something others will rarely see, but we see it, and we love it. If you were here for the graduation party this May, and were one of the people who had to stack your coat in a pile, on a chair, in the dust-filled closet- you have to admit- we've come a long way.

Operation "Vacation": Day 4 revisited

2007-07-04T10:39:00.000-04:00

We obviously didn't make our nightly posting so I'll try to do a quick recap. This one will be short and sans pictures because our plan is to finish up the closet this morning, at which point we'll post the pictures of the final product. Yesterday we managed to sand and recoat the mud, give the closet it's final coat of paint and touchups, Clint finished what we're calling "the flourishes" (you'll see). We wiped down the floors and walls (it's amazing how much dust the sanding generates) and continued our work with the flor tiles. I was convinced we could get it done last night, but after 4 short hours of tediously cutting carpet squares we headed out for some bbq and fireworks. We have about 5 more tiles to cut, then we install the whole thing- put in the shelving system and we're done. Pictures soon.

Operation "Vacation": Day 4 in progress

2007-07-03T11:34:00.001-04:00

Let me say how disturbing ;) it was to have the first piece of "artwork" we hang be one of my posters. Unfortunately, it matches what we had done perfectly (serendipitously so). That, and it's also hard to argue with a pregnant lady (not that I put up that much of a fight).

MORE TONIGHT!

Operation "Vacation": Day 3

2007-07-02T23:39:00.000-04:00

Although we started the day off a bit slow, and took many breaks to run errands for food and tools, we actually ended up getting quite a bit accomplished, although admittidly not as much as we were hoping for. As Clint pointed out though, it was much more than we would have gotten done had we both been at work.

We often mentioned the closet and I know it seems like it should be done by now (believe me- I know) nevertheless we've had a seemingly endless to do list for that room. Having the professional acrobat/electrician gut part of the wall didn't help the list any, so that's where we started.

We cut a giant drywall patch and hammered it in creating a rainstorm of plaster. We then applied a combination of drywall tape and plaster in a way that I can only describe as haphazard and full of complete disregard for any norms of perfection. That should be dry by our child's fifth birthday (hopefully) at which point we can sand, put a final coat on, and paint.

The next step was filling in some missing boards around the furnace return pipe, and levelling out the floor with shims.

We weren't kidding around with those:

Finally we got started installing the Flor tiles. These are 17" carpet squares we're putting down for as you might recall, when the floors were refinished they couldn't put the drum sander in the closet for fear of crashing through the crawl space door. I'll admit I thought this was going to be way easier.

Put simply, it's not- in fact it's one of the more difficult things we've done so far. 3 hours later we have 6 (of 14) installed. We're quite optimistic about tomorrow though, we're hoping we now have the hang of it.

Operation "Vacation": Day 1 & 2

2007-07-02T01:58:00.000-04:00

About a month ago, we both took off this week for an anniversary/4th of July trip to Ocean City, MD. As the week got closer and we started considering finances, the state of the house, my increasing girth and anticipation of how much harder it will be to do things as the months go on, and the need to get certain things done by the time baby reno arrives- we decided that instead we would declare war on the house and see how much we could get done in a week. At the end of day 2, I must say, we're pretty
optimistic. Although we're deliberately avoiding setting expectations of what the place will look like in a week, if the last two days are any indication we just might have the place done. Of course I'm kidding, but seriously- these have been two of the more productive days we've had in the new place- and that's saying a lot.

We started in the dining room, largely because I was itching to see what the new rug would look like down. We took it out of its packaging for the first time Friday night, and decided the walls might look good green. Since with all the renovations we've practically duplicated Sherwin Williams' wall of paint samples in our home, we went to our stash and picked out "Lemongrass", and thus we were off. In the last two days we did copious amounts of mudding and spackling, painted the ceiling, painted three of the walls green, one wall brown, and the cubby hole clay. After this was done we realized we had some prints that would look great, and proceeded to hang our first pieces of artwork in the house (only about 1 year later!) And I must humbly say, it all looks fantastic. Keep in mind the trim is a ways off from being done in this room, thus you have the unpainted areas around all the doors and floors which will one day be covered.

This was where we were mid-Sunday morning-

and our progress by early evening-

Per the usual for us this meant working through our anniversary, but we decided that making progress on the house was the best gift we could give each other. We did get the chance to head to dinner and we tiredly celebrated 2 years together. They have flown by, but they have been so much more than we could have asked for.

Our goal this week is to post our progress at the end of the night so stay tuned to see what we get to next!

Two steps forward, one step back

2007-06-14T12:25:00.001-04:00

A lot of times with the house I end up constructing and living with a “fantasy timeline”. I’ve been doing this since we got it when I initially thought we could have Christmas in the living room (it was about 3 months later) and when I thought the closet was a weekend project (also coincidentally about 3 months ago). More recently we were thinking that having the light installed would be the final piece and with that the closet would be done. Ha! Instead, what started out as a “couple of holes” to run the wire behind the wall ended up with giant sections of drywall missing in various patches around the closet. Fearing this we initially told him we were fine with running the wire outside of the wall, in fact I believe our exact words were “whichever way is easier.”

I’m not sure of the logic that made the octogenarian dancer/electrician conclude that nearly tearing out a wall was the way to go but alas ultimate we got our light installed and thankfully we have a giant bucket of mud and spare drywall from Clint’s studio so it’s more a matter of inconvenience than any real concern. As we set out to start this work however we realized that now would be the time to take care of the other issue that has been plaguing us- the doorframe which is missing a section where the hinges screw in, but has a random piece of wood stuck in there that somehow manages to function. Of course this was unacceptable in our whole “do it right the first time” renovation mindset so now we have a carpenter/handyman coming out to figure out if there is some way to make a more stable/permanent patch without ripping out the whole frame. Our reasons for wanting to keep the original frame in place are two-fold: (1) because it’s original and hence goes with our overall approach of trying to restore rather than replace, and (2) because I am fully convinced that there is no way someone could reconstruct that frame in a way that will allow the door to work. Like any old house ours is one that is not particularly keen on right angles, and even looking at the frame one can see that it’s more suited to a funhouse than a closet. Like many of our calls to trained professionals we’re not entirely sure what we’re asking for is possible- but that has never stopped us before.

Rug Drama

2007-06-13T16:04:00.000-04:00

So there are more updates coming on the closet/ceiling fan, but we’ll shift at this moment to today’s rug drama. I’m not sure how much we’ve mentioned about our big dining room plans, but we had just that- a plan that centered on an area rug we searched high and low for that we both like and that would fit in with the space. Since the dining room is still a ways off our plan was to continue on with the work, then buy the rug when we needed it and had saved up the money for it. Nevertheless we picked out paint colors and accent colors based on it (oh yes-paint swatches in the store holding them up to the rug and everything), and incorporated them into the closet, but even more importantly we cemented in our mind how it was all going to go. Clint raised the issue a month or two ago of “what if it is discontinued?” to which I casually replied "oh, I’ll keep an eye on it and then we’d catch it on sale first which is even better!" You can see where this is going…

Fast forward to this morning when we’re discussing over email what our next step on the house is and I think to myself “I should check on that rug while I’m at it.” Pull it up online and lo and behold they only have the 4x6 left. I call Clint immediately and tell him I have bad news (which in hindsight is not a good way to set up a topic as inconsequential as a rug when you’re pregnant). After his pulse slowed considerably and he was able to get his heart out of his throat we decided on calling the local store and the 800 number to see if there were any, anywhere in stock. No luck on any of those circuits and just when I was resigned to giving up the picture of our fabulous dining room I had in my head, I thought to call the local store to see if they still had the display. They informed me it would be a 6x9 (we were looking for 8x10), but no, they did not. Reinvigorated with the possibility that some store somewhere might still have one hanging I called the next closest store: Cleveland. The lovely gentleman there was able to locate it in the back- the lone rug in the country bigger than 4x6, and ridiculously discounted because a. it was already on clearance and b. it was the “floor model” even though it was hanging. He informed me that because of all this it was non-returnable, but through my elation I didn’t care.

Of course after placing the order and coming down from that euphoria I started thinking about size. We have an old 8x10 under there now, which is plenty of room to pull the chairs out and remain on the rug. A 6x9 means we’re losing 2’ on each side, which could affect that significantly. I’m itching to head home and fold the edges of the rug we have now over to see how small this is going to be. Nonetheless it will be delivered next Thursday so we shall see. We might have just gotten ourselves a new bedroom rug which is nice, but not exactly what we had in mind. My it is pretty, though.

Electrical work, at long last

2007-06-12T11:35:00.000-04:00

As much as we like bite off more than we can chew, we know our limits- namely anything that could cause lasting permanent damage to our house and ourselves such as electrical work and plumbing.
Thus when the weather turned warmer and our living room ceiling fan remained in a box, and our closet project got closer to completion but still without light, we knew it was time to call the electrician. The ceiling fan we might have been able to tackle ourselves were there one before, but reading up on it and finding out it took specialized brackets running between ceiling joists for stability and realizing it weighs about 50lbs I couldn’t escape the mental image of the fan wobbling it’s way out of the ceiling and crashing through the floor to the crawlspace. After that replayed in my head a few dozen times I realized sometimes, for peace of mind, it’s just better to hire it out.

We started out about a month ago making an appointment with the guy who did our knob and tube wiring replacement and running the electric to the garage to give us the beloved garage door opener. The appointment time came and went with no electrician, phone calls were placed and not returned, and alas a ceiling fan and closet light still on the floor of our living room, doing us very little good. We turned to Angie’s List and got the name of someone else- someone who specialized in ceiling fans in fact, which gave us confidence considering we (of course) had some uncommon model that required quite a few extra steps on installation. Of course that confidence was quickly quashed when he took one look at the fan and said “I’ve never seen one like that before” and eroded even further when he started asking US how to install it. Nevertheless he showed up on time which was already one step ahead of where we were. He was a firecracker too! I didn’t get a good look at him but he’s smaller than we are, about late 60s, early 70s and he came bursting in the door exclaiming “alright, what are we doing.” (Side note: clint knows more about this than I do but apparently he was at one time a dancer in a traveling troupe.) Clint didn’t take to him too well at first as he began tossing his tools on our carefully protected (and easily dentable) wood floors, ordering him around and generally diminishing his hope that the work would be up to our standards, but the latest update I’ve heard from Clint is that the fan is up- and looks awesome. This is a long time coming as we bought the fan in November, and tried at least four techniques over the course of the last 6 months to get the fan blades stained darker to match our woodwork. Impatient as I am, I’m heading home at lunch to catch a glimpse of the wonder of an overhead living room light. We'll get some pictures of the fan, and hopefully coming soon...the before and after on the closet!

Picking back up where we left off

2007-06-04T11:06:00.001-04:00

The last month or so has been a process of slow but steady progress. We’re still working on the closet in part because we feel that will serve as the key to bring order and organization to our otherwise chaotic lives. It also seems like that will be the area that serves as the first domino, setting off a chain reaction of accomplishment across the entire house (or at least we hope). This process has been rather slow in part because without the constant pressure and rhythm of school I tend to let myself get a bit lazy, but also in part because most of the things to do in there require both of us, and believe me if it’s hard to get myself motivated to get the work done, it’s even harder to use the rare spare moments we have together working on a closet. We’re on the final leg though, and we have an electrician coming to install a light next Tuesday, which gives serves as the fire lit under us to have all the other pieces in place by then. I’m putting the final coats of stain on the trim – of course outside in a well ventilated area with my OSHA-approved respirator- while Clint puts the final touches on the furnace return pipe. We joke that this is going to be the nicest room in the house, (which is kind of funny and kind of not because it actually will be) but even more than that it is a rather small (or at least at the time we thought small) project that can give us that much needed sense of accomplishment to give us the motivation to carry on. The goal in the back of our minds is to get the upstairs where we want it by the time the baby comes, which I think might be impossible, but at least we’re getting back on the horse of home renovation after a much-needed couple of months’ break.

We've got grass!

2007-05-03T10:57:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, after noticing some of the blades of grass were extending up past 4” already, we decided to pull up the covering. Of course as soon as we planted the seed and laid the covering down I couldn’t stop myself from looking all over the internet because one thing we did glean from the copious lowes visits is that there were multiple schools of thought on the straw. Some said leave it, it was fine- and this particular material did say it was biodegradable; others said to pull it up at the first sign of grass so that it can get enough sunlight. Once I looked further into the “biodegradable” claim and realized it would degenerate it 6 months to a year, we decided after two weeks it would come up. This had the added advantage that we can reuse the material either for overseeding or when we decide to do something about the front.

We carefully pulled it back trying to step as lightly as possible but for some reason didn’t think to work toward the garage and ended up with a pile in our front yard. I tried to convince Clint to leave it for a couple of days until we could more safely walk on the grass (we were worried about crushing it) but he was understandably concerned about our reputation with the neighbors. My next bright idea was walking it through the house, which he quickly rejected, or putting a tarp down and dragging it through- also shot down. We ended up piling it into the wheel barrow and rolling it around the block to the back. The pile was larger than the two of us, so I held it up while verbally navigating Clint around corners. We somehow made it to the alley, where we quickly assessed the size of the pile, and the space in our garage and decided the only place for it for now is on the side of our garage, until we can dry it out and reroll it. It looks like we hosted an episode of hee haw, but the yard- the yard looks amazing! Well…amazing compared to what it did. It looks best if you get down eye level with the grass and look out on it, you can envision the future sea of green that it will become, especially when the wind gently ripples through. Of course looking at it from above you really only see sparse, patchy, singular blades of grass, but given our expectations were set about as low as we could go, we are ecstatic. We threw some more seed down in the patchy areas and continue to water and hope for the best.

On our way to a real yard

2007-04-23T12:09:00.000-04:00

So this weekend will go down as one of the busiest, hardest working in our history, I think only to be topped by the other weekend spent on the yard breaking up the brick/concrete sidewalk that extended 5” into the dirt. After looking at the projected weather for the weekend, and realizing that spending a weekend inside working on the closet sounded less than appealing, we decided to tackle the yard- something we’ve been thinking about, but avoiding for quite some time. In part this is because we just didn’t feel like all the mental work that we first needed to do- figuring out the tiller rental, then figuring out how much and what type of seed, fertilization, etc., not to mention that our yard was riddled with a nice combination of rocks and glass- two things I’d rather not have mixed in with our grass when we have a little one running around the yard barefoot. We decided to face it one step at a time, starting with tiller rental. I was worried our project was doomed before it even began when I began calling around looking for a rear tine tiller. Naturally waiting the day before one of the nicest weekends of the year isn’t the best idea, but we managed to get one of the last ones available. Next step, transporting it. The cost of delivery was a mind-blowing $80 each way, but we also had to factor in that I could in no way help get it in or out of a truck. We thought about a moving truck with a ramp, but settled on a pickup truck with billy coming to our rescue. Two hernias and a couple of hours later we had a giant, fancy tiller in our back yard. This is about where we started out at.

Clint got to work churning up dirt, while I pulled up our paver patio, and shoveled out copious amounts of sand. We thought about leaving it for a split second, but in redistributing the soil we lost about an inch or two overall, which would have made the patio unlevel. That and we have a penchant for undoing what we didn’t do, just so we can make it ours. Then the raking and root removal began. We had to first level the dirt, then create the necessary slope from the house. In doing this we uncovered thousands of roots running across the yard, some we could pull up with a good deal of effort, and others where we just gave up and clipped below the surface of the soil. We literally filled three landscape bags full of these. We also spent hours raking and picking up rocks and glass by hand. The only objects of particular interest we uncovered were a mini screwdriver, a spoon, and a marble, but alas no buried treasure. This is where we were end of day Saturday.

Once this was complete, (Saturday evening) we headed to Lowes (one of our 6, yes 6 trips there this weekend). Then we started our questioning. Did we need to conduct a soil test, did we need fertilizer, what type of seed should we use, should we cover it with straw, etc. We did a fair amount of research on the internet, but it seems there are many schools of thought when it comes to how best to go about all this so we thought it would be easier to try to get an answer out of someone. Turns out though, there are just as many different answers with the Lowes people. We got every answer from “you’ll never get grass to grow in the spring” (umm, why are there aisles and aisles of grass seed in the seasonal section then?) to “no you don’t need fertilizer” (but the grass seed says we do!). We ended up using a mix of common sense, the package instructions, our best guesses, the input we liked from others, and the guidance of a magic 8 ball. With all that we closed our eyes, throw down some topsoil, seed, fertilizer, and covering to protect it from the copious amounts of birds around us, watered it, and hoped for the best.

We’ll tend to it over the next couple of weeks and hope for some sprouts. We’re thinking as long as we get something we can revisit in the fall, overseeding and fertilizing until we eventually come out with a green lawn. Although we’re both quite stiff, tired, and in need of a few days for recuperation, we’re pretty proud of what we accomplished, even if it does end up just a dirt yard. At least it’s a level, glass free dirt yard anyway.